


give me all your hopeless hearts

by itsmyusualphannie (itsmyusualweeb)



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Dan is tired and so am I, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Falling In Love, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Pining, Valentine's Day, coffee shop date, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-12
Updated: 2020-02-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:40:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22682632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsmyusualweeb/pseuds/itsmyusualphannie
Summary: Dan is a university student who doesn't believe in love, but when Valentine's Day rolls around, he feels himself suddenly falling for the boy who sits next to him in his writing 101 class. When they're assigned a project together, Dan has the brilliant idea to ask Phil out - for research!“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 8
Kudos: 44
Collections: Phandom Writers Discord 2020 Valentine's Day Gift Exchange





	give me all your hopeless hearts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Yiffandquiff (paradisobound)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/paradisobound/gifts).



> happy valentine's day [alexis](https://yiffandquiff.tumblr.com/)! i didn't _exactly_ follow your prompt but i hope you like it regardless! i don't think i've ever written a valentine's day fic before but i loved your prompt so much that i had to do it.
> 
> yes the title is from a mcr song don't come for me. i have a shakespeare quote in the summary i'm Sophisticated.
> 
> beta'ed by [cal who is the best person ever](https://candanandphilnot.tumblr.com/) check out their fics!

“Welcome to class, my name is,” ear-piercing scratches of chalk against a blackboard, “Professor...White. You can call me Mr White if you’d like. I’m your Writing 101 instructor this semester.”

Dan stared dead-eyed at the professor standing at the front of the room. He couldn’t decide yet if the guy’s enthusiasm was inspiring or annoying.

“— so for our first activity, we’ll have introductions! Not the plain, boring kind, though.” The professor winked. He had massive eyes, so it was obvious. “You’re going to pick the person on your left or right and share some information, then introduce _them_ to the class!”

Dan had not enrolled in a creative writing class to _socialise_. This was not his idea of a fun time. No one else seemed excited about the idea either, but they slowly turned to their neighbours and began hesitant, stilted conversations.

“Hi!” chirped the guy next to him. Dan cast him an unimpressed glance. He had thick-rimmed glasses, a bright smile, and a horrifically eye-searing blue-orange shirt. “My name’s Phil. What’s your name?”

All of his efforts to ignore everyone in this class as he had settled into his seat earlier were now ruined. “Dan,” he said, giving up on his antisocial efforts.

“Cool!” Phil hesitated. “So what are some...I dunno, interesting facts about you?”

“I’m tired.”

Phil laughed, although Dan hadn’t meant to be funny. “I mean, it’s a ten o’clock class. Still disgustingly early, so I get that. My favourite colour’s blue, what’s yours?”

Dan glanced down at his black band shirt, black jeans, black shoes, black backpack. He looked back at Phil. “Pink,” he deadpanned.

Another peal of laughter. Phil’s tongue poked out a little when he laughed. Dan informed himself that it was annoying, _not_ appealing.

“We should be friends,” Phil decided.

Hmm. Dan considered it. “Sure.”

“Hey, friend!” Phil greeted him every day for the next two weeks as Dan slumped into class. Phil was consistently at least ten minutes early. Dan was consistently at least one minute late.

“Hi,” Dan always said back.

They didn’t talk a _lot_ in class, and rarely hung out afterwards, as both had a different class. Neither had gotten each other’s phone number. It was a class-based friendship, Dan concluded after a few days of waiting for Phil to ask for his number so they could talk outside of class. If it hadn’t happened yet, it probably never would.

“Good morning?” Phil said as Dan dropped heavily into the seat next to him. It was more of a question than a statement.

Dan just blinked slowly at him. “No,” he said.

“Good morning!” chirped Professor White from the front of the room. He was bouncing around the desk that he never used. He was always on his feet, moving from one side of the room to the other, scribbling on the blackboard, waving extravagantly to get his points across. He was clearly a morning person. It was horrific.

“Time to turn in your assignments from last week! Remember, they were due today!”

Dan sighed and unzipped his backpack to haul out a folded piece of paper and pass it up. The girl in front of him always had long, glorious blonde curls, and not for the first time, Dan was tempted to sink his fingers into it. Or maybe just tug on one of the more tightly wound curls and watch it _boing_ in front of him. 

“How’d that go?” Phil asked Dan, waving his paper demonstratively before passing up his too. “I couldn’t figure out the third question, so I just made something up. What’d you get for it?”

Dan shrugged leisurely. “I did it at three in the morning. I can’t remember.”

Phil looked concerned, but before he could say anything, the professor was talking again.

“We’ll be starting group assignments on Thursday, so come prepared for that!”

Dan hated group assignments.

Phil apparently agreed. “Ew,” he said. They shared a commiserating glance.

A girl in the corner raised her hand. She didn’t wait for the professor to notice her before loudly asking, “Can we choose our own group partners?”

Professor White laughed and shook a finger, somehow managing to do that even while balancing the stacks of papers that were handed to him. “No no, I don’t want to allow bias or discrimination. It’ll all be random.”

“Ew,” Dan said this time, but considerably louder than Phil had been. A titter rolled across the room. Dan sighed.

“Half of your names have been written on a piece of paper and mixed up in this bucket!” declared the professor. He hoisted a sturdy white bucket in one hand. “The other half will be choosing one name at random!”

“Is it really a group project if there will only be two people in each group?” someone asked.

Dan didn’t know whether it was a good or a bad thing that the professor’s jubilant nature made most of the class willing to speak up whenever they felt like it.

“Ah, you have a point!” Professor White chuckled and pointed at the person who had spoken. “But calling it a partner project is much more boring than a group project. Besides, with Valentine’s Day just around the corner, I didn’t want it to have romantic connotations! Maybe I should though!”

It was just more opportunity to have a terrible partner who wouldn’t do their share of the work, Dan realised, and then had another moment of realisation when he remembered that he didn’t even know what the group project _was_. So he hadn’t been paying attention yesterday, sue him. Who _would_ pay attention at disgusting o’clock in the morning?

“All right, time to pick your partners!” announced the professor. He shook the bucket cheerfully. “I’ll call names, so come up as I say them!”

Dan sighed and propped his chin in his hands on the desk. He watched with disinterest as names were called and his classmates reluctantly peeled themselves from their seats and trudged to the front of the room to pick a name. Either his name would be called, or it wouldn’t. He’d worry about it when it happened.

“Phil Lester!”

Dan’s attention snapped to Phil, who was already sliding out of his desk. He tossed Dan a grin as he shuffled down the narrow aisle between desks toward their professor. It only took him a moment to pluck a folded paper from the bucket that was waved toward him, and then he was heading back toward his seat. He didn’t open the paper until he had dropped back into his seat, which allowed Dan to see the exact moment when Phil’s face lit up.

“I got you!” he exclaimed, turning to Dan and beaming so widely that it looked like it hurt. The corners of his eyes crinkled and his nose squished. It was horrible. It was beautiful.

Dan felt something deep inside his stomach give a little yank. Oh no.

“Yay,” he said weakly.

It was Tuesday, and Dan did not have a crush on Phil Lester.

“Hey, friend!” said Phil as Dan dropped his backpack next to his desk and then dropped himself into the seat.

Dan’s heart quailed beneath the grin Phil tossed him.

Shit.

It was Wednesday, and Dan did not have a crush on Phil Lester.

“Here, you dropped this!” said Phil after class, right before Dan headed out the door of the classroom. He handed Dan a pencil.

Their fingers brushed and it felt like a static shock up Dan’s arm into his brain. He squeaked and then fled.

Damn it.

It was Thursday, and Dan _might_ have a very small, trivial crush on Phil Lester.

“So, ready to start our project, _partner_?” Phil chirped as soon as Dan had settled into his seat. Dan could only notice that he wasn’t wearing his glasses today. It made the tilt of his head just that much looser.

“Fuck,” said Dan.

“What?”

Oh no, he’d said it out loud. “I...uh, I mean, I’m not ready to start it.”

Phil laughed and waved it away. “Neither am I, it’s fine. But we can do this.”

Dan could _not_ do this.

“All right, it’s time to do this!” trumpeted the professor. He was passing out sheets of paper to every student. Dan sometimes wondered why he always handed the assignments to each individual student instead of handing a stack to the few who were in the first row and letting them pass the rest back. Who was he to question their professor’s time-consuming methods, though? 

It gave him more time to do nothing while he waited. And Dan had a lot of nothing to do.

“All right!” said the professor, standing back with his hands on his hips and a satisfied smile across his face as he watched everyone flip through the papers he’d just given them. “So, group project!”

“Partner project,” someone said, and someone else giggled loudly.

Professor White ignored them. “These will be due in two weeks, but that doesn’t mean you can put it off ‘til last minute!”

Dan was quite sure that almost everyone in this class would put it off until the last minute. It was just the uni student way.

“Your assignment is explained in more detail in the paper, but basically, you’re going to be doing a creative writing project together that has to be themed around Valentine’s Day! If you have any questions, make sure to email me. And make sure to exchange contact information with your partners so you can stay in touch outside of class!”

A thrill shivered down Dan’s spine without his permission. He cast a quick glance at Phil, who was watching their professor intently. At least _he_ paid attention.

“All right, that’s all for that! I’ll give you a few minutes to talk and then we’re going to start discussing some high fantasy works!”

Quiet chatter broke out immediately, students turning to their partners to discuss their plans. Well, most of them. The loud group in the corner was laughing and talking about their next visit to Greggs. Dan had no idea how any of them turned in their assignments on time.

“Phone?” Phil asked. Dan was yanked from his thoughts.

“Wha?”

“What’s your phone number?” he clarified.

Dan told him, willing away the heat that had crawled up his face, and watched as Phil typed in the numbers, then added the contact name as ‘Dan <3.’ The blush now lived on Dan’s face.

Phil shuffled through his packet of papers. “Hmm,” he said. He glanced up at Dan. “There are a few options here, which one do you want to do?”

Dan frantically flipped through his papers, which he hadn’t even looked at yet. He’d just let the professor slide them into his hands and immediately ignored them. He found the page that Phil was looking at and quickly skimmed it. All of the options looked horrific.

“Uh, the third one?”

Phil nodded brightly. “That’s what I was thinking!”

Dan frowned down at his paper as he reread the description of the project. _Write a story between 1000-5000 words about a character who was struck by Cupid’s arrow. The character falls in love with their best friend, who was_ _not_ _hit by an arrow. Explore the relationship between the characters before the arrow, after the arrow, and (optional for bonus points) what happens if the effects wear off_. _Must_ _include the characters in at least one romantic setting as well as information about the god Cupid (citations not necessary, but must be somewhat accurate to the mythology._

It looked...complicated, but doable.

“I actually know a lot about Greek and Roman mythology,” Phil confessed. “I was a nerd about that when I was younger. I also took a class about it last semester.”

“I...know who Cupid is, at least,” said Dan.

Phil laughed. It was a divine, bright thing. Dan’s mind scrabbled at the sides of his head. “Well, that’s all we really need to know, I guess. Do you want to brainstorm for the characters and setting later?”

“Why don’t we go out?” Dan blurted.

Phil blinked at him, tilted his head, opened his mouth to say something, but Dan hastily interrupted. “Ah! I mean. For research! We should pretend to go on a date and use that as the romantic setting for the story.”

Phil’s mouth slowly closed. He looked thoughtful, or maybe disappointed. Dan wasn’t sure. “That...can work. It’d give us something precise to go off.” A mischievous twinkle sparked in his eyes. “But then, which one of us was hit by the arrow?”

Dan decided that he was an utter idiot as soon as he saw Phil step through the door to the campus coffee shop. It wasn’t busy, with only a few people hunched over their laptops in the various corners of the shop, but Dan had looked up to the door every time someone had stepped through. He was an idiot, because it hurt his chest to see Phil, with his gloriously long legs and easy smile. He was an idiot, because this fake date that Dan was masquerading as research made him long for the real thing, and it hadn’t even really begun yet.

“Hey, friend!” Phil said brightly as soon as he saw Dan, whose feet were tucked awkwardly beneath the unbelievably small chair in the corner, and then he seemed to pause and reconsider. He shook his head and then took a deep breath, the same smile overtaking his face, but this time with a sly edge to it. “Hey, Dan,” he said, and his voice was low and rumbled with a velvet timbre. Dan’s cramped knees went weak.

“Hi,” Dan managed. He carefully did not stare at Phil’s lips as he made his way toward the table. He dropped into the seat across from Dan and leaned forward with an intense look in his eyes that made Dan want to squirm.

“How’s your day been going?”

Dan swallowed hard. “Uh,” he said. He fought off the flush that wanted to climb his cheeks and steeled himself. He was tempted to retort that he had seen Phil just earlier that day in class, but he was supposed to _pretend_. This was _research_ , after all. “Uh, it’s been good. I had class. And I ate lunch.”

Well, there went any hope of Dan thinking he would act normally.

“I know what else you can eat,” Phil purred, and then the smouldering expression on his face cracked, and he burst out laughing. “Sorry! Sorry, I can’t flirt.”

Dan had already sunk down into his seat, hoping it wasn’t that perceptible. “We said no sex innuendoes,” he complained. He wouldn’t be able to survive this if Phil was using innuendoes. It was far too easy to imagine the actual situation.

Phil snorted and flapped his hands as if he was shaking out his laughter. “It’s cool,” he said. “I can totally be fake in love. I mean, I can totally play a fake character in love. I mean - ”

“I’m going to get us drinks,” Dan interrupted without meaning to, and he stood so fast that his chair legs screeched against the floor. “Um...what do you want?”

Phil fell back into his persona as if he’d shrugged on a coat. Dan could see the visible difference. His shoulders relaxed, head tilted, expression slipped into something coy and dangerous. The only similarity between that and his usual cheerful self was his eyes - still twinkling at Dan with some sort of humour shared only between the two of them. “Let me get it,” he said, standing.

Dan followed him helplessly to the counter. He’d lost all of the usual disinterest that he wore daily. Caring was _annoying_. There was no line at the counter, and the nose-studded barista glanced up at them as they approached, their long nails poised over the phone they wielded like another instrument of the shop.

“I’ll get a grande caramel macchiato,” Phil told them, then added, “hot,” and glanced at Dan expectantly.

Dan blinked. “The same,” he said, and he sounded surprised even to his own ears. What were the chances of them both liking the same drink? Maybe it wasn’t Phil’s favourite, though.

“That’s my favourite!” said Phil. He grinned at Dan, and then the barista. “Two, then.”

“Five pounds,” said the barista, without moving to ring it up. “Do you have a punch card?”

Dan frowned. “Five pounds for both of them?”

“Yep. Valentine’s Day special, two grandes are five pounds.” They pointed to the massive poster hanging right beside the table where they had been sitting. It was horrifically red, pink, and white. Dan had no idea how he hadn’t noticed it. The fact that he had little to no spacial awareness probably had a lot to do with it.

“Oh,” was all he could say. “Cool.”

“Yep,” they said, not looking very impressed with Dan. Dan wouldn’t be very impressed with Dan either. “Do you have a punch card or do you want one? Buy ten drinks, get one free.”

Phil was already handing them the payment. “Sure, let’s get a punch card,” he said. Dan didn’t mean to notice, but he couldn’t ignore the way that Phil was only directing the most flirtatious of his smiles toward Dan. Only _Dan_ got the quick smirks and the raised eyebrows. He couldn’t help but feel gratified, even though he knew it wasn’t real. It was just for the _research_.

“Here,” said Phil, and Dan hurriedly yanked his mind from the thoughts of Phil flirting with him, and glanced down at the small white card Phil was offering him. It had the logo of the coffee shop, the cheery words “Buy 10, Get 1 FREE!” inked on the top, and two haphazard stars stamped into the bottom. “For next time we come,” Phil explained, like it was nothing to say that they would come back, and Dan’s chest hurt with an ache he couldn’t describe. 

He took the card and put it in his pocket. It burned against his leg like a brand. He watched the barista make their drinks, too aware of the way Phil stood only inches from his side. There might have been an awkward silence, but Phil leaned and bumped Dan’s shoulder with his own. The motion served to remind Dan of their similarity in height. They were the tallest people in class, other than the fucking massive rugby player that sat a few seats behind them.

“Here are your coffees.”

Phil accepted the drinks with a word of thanks, then handed one to Dan as they headed back to their table. Dan noted the way he had to shuffle his legs to get them to fit under the table, just like Dan had to do.

“Well,” said Phil, once they were situated across from each other. He took a long sip of his drink and smiled that same coy smile he’d been offering Dan ever since he’d begun these research flirtations, as if he himself had been struck by an arrow by the love god Cupid. “What are your interests?”

Dan was aware that he was wielding his coffee like a shield in front of him, but he couldn’t just put it down. He felt like if it was out of his hands, so would his emotions be out of his control. This was why he didn’t _get_ crushes. They were indescribably inconvenient. “Games,” he finally said, and hastened to explain when Phil quirked an eyebrow, “like, video games. Uh, Mario Kart, Guild Wars, Pokémon, Final Fantasy, Skyrim.” His inner nerd held his breath in anticipation of Phil’s reaction.

Phil almost spilt his coffee as he swung an arm in excitement. “I love those!” he said.

Dan relaxed into his seat, unaware that he had even been holding himself tightly. He felt himself smiling for the first time since Phil had come inside the coffee shop, a small, tenuous thing that grew as he listened to Phil begin to ramble about his own favourite video games. Maybe, just maybe, Dan thought, this could feel like a real date.

“Well,” said Dan, “this is me.”

They stopped in front of the door to a dorm room, the muted lights in the hallway above them casting stunted shadows beneath them. Dan shifted from one foot to the other, glancing from the sock on the door to Phil and then back. “Uh,” he said. “Thanks for walking me back.”

“Anytime,” said Phil. His smile was less eerily flirtatious than it had been at the beginning of this research date, now more of a relaxed, casual grin that was his usual in class.

The date, fake though it may be, had actually been fun. They’d talked for almost three hours about video games, music, favourite TV shows, dogs, and film-making, which was a particular passion of Phil’s. The time had sped by so quickly that Dan hadn’t noticed its passage, and only came to realise it when the sun had stretched long, tinted rays through the floor-length window that had been next to their table in the coffee shop. Phil had offered to walk Dan back to his dorm room, and here they were...outside of Dan’s dorm room.

Dan spoke again, and could barely hear himself over the rush of his heartbeat in his ears. “I had fun,” he said. “We should...do it again sometime. Hang out as friends instead of going on a fake date.” He regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth. Not the invitation, but the way he had phrased it.

Phil’s mouth twisted in a wry smile. “Yeah,” he said, and it felt almost meaningful as he added, “As friends?”

Heat seared Dan’s ears, and he knew they were burnished a cool pink without having to look in a mirror. “I…” he started, and then he stopped. He thought about Phil’s careful flirtations, the way that something had seemed to click inside of Dan with their long talk in the coffee shop, the casual, too-close space between them as they had walked here to the dorm. He looked at Phil’s quirked lips, the tilt of his head, the long fingers tucked into pockets as he waited. He breathed in the musty aroma of the hallway and the pine-fresh scent that enveloped Phil. He breathed again.

“Not really,” he confessed. His hand lifted without his permission to rub the back of his neck, and he wanted to duck his head to avoid Phil’s gaze, but stubbornly met it head-on instead. “I...I meant to ask you out for real, but I panicked. I was dumb, I’m sorry. I really like you. If you’d like, we could...go out for real. Maybe.”

For an eternal moment, his heart thudded painfully against his chest and his breath was frozen, so, so afraid that Phil would say it had just been research for him, that the coy smiles and flirtations had just been part of an act. He didn’t say a word, though, just allowed Phil the time to collect his own thoughts.

But Phil didn’t make him wait long. He laughed, wrinkles sinking deep around his eyes, and the sound echoed gloriously in the long hallway. It was empty, so the sound was heard only by Dan’s ears. He calmed after a moment, enough to place a hand on Dan’s shoulder. A mirthful tear hovered at the edge of one eye. “Ah,” he said, and swiped at his eyelid. “Sorry. I have to confess something, too. This whole time, I was pretending it _was_ a real date. Well, I came onto you a little more than I usually do on first dates, but I _was_ supposed to be pretending to be in love with you, after all. I like you too, though, Dan.”

Dan’s breath left him all in a rush and he felt dizzy with the lack of air, the excess of possibilities that clung to him like the thinnest of spider’s web. “You always said ‘friend,’ though,” he rejoined weakly.

Phil offered a one-shouldered apologetic shrug. “Instinct. Didn’t want to assume. But I _would_ like to go out with you.” And a twinkle claimed his eyes as he gazed down at Dan. “That is,” he said, “as long as you’re not just playing your research role right now.”

“No!” Dan hastily assured him, maybe a little too hastily. “I mean, it’s all me. _I_ like you.”

“I’m glad,” said Phil, and then he was moving closer, and Dan felt his back hit the wall of the hallway behind him. Phil leaned in ever-so-close and the air sang with tension between them. It felt alight with potential, the centimetres between their lips closing rapidly. Dan couldn’t move, a butterfly trapped beneath the pin of a keen hunter. “So,” said Phil, his breath a whisper against Dan’s lips, “did that count as our first date? Or should I wait until our next one to kiss you?”

Dan burned with anticipation. His fingers flexed, eager to dig into something, _anything_ , and then he succumbed to the desire and lifted them to cling to Phil’s loose, ridiculous plaid shirt. The fabric was silk under his touch, but it was nothing compared to the words murmured too close to his mouth. “Yeah,” he said, and he felt desperate, but he _was_ desperate, and he was already leaning into Phil. He was never more grateful for their height similarity. “Yeah, kiss me.”

Their lips met, and it was glorious. Sparks might not have flown from that first contact, but they sputtered in Dan’s chest, lighting him up with furious desire. He pulled Phil closer, hands clenched tight in his shirt, and felt Phil’s arms like a brand as they slipped around his back. Their mouths parted for breath, then met again, smooth, slow, heady, better than any drug.

They didn’t break apart until a door far down the hallway slammed, and even then it was slow, a gradual pull away and lessening pressure until their lips fell away and they just stood, wrapped in each other’s arms, foreheads pressed against each other. Dan could feel Phil’s smile against his cheek.

“All right,” said Phil. “I guess I’ll go out with you.”

Dan pinched him and was gratified by his squirm and tiny yelp. He laughed, almost surprised to hear the sound from his own mouth, and then he tugged Phil back in. Their mouths collided again, burning and biting and everything Dan had ever needed.

Maybe this Valentine’s Day, Dan thought, wouldn’t be so bad.

**Author's Note:**

> they got an A on their assignment
> 
> if you liked it, drop your favourite line! if you hated it, drop your least favourite! :D 
> 
> in any case i hope you have a great valentine's day, whether you're going out with a partner, hanging out at home with your dog or cat or ferret, or reading fics while chugging wine at 11pm (aka me). <33
> 
> [reblog!!](https://itsmyusualphannie.tumblr.com/post/190826516600/give-me-all-your-hopeless-hearts)


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